More than two decades after the GM EV1, the first modern-era electric vehicle (EV) from a mainstream carmaker, went on sale in 1996, EVs finally look like they’re here to stay. What’s more, the recent success of cars such as Tesla Model S, Model X and Model 3, Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe, as well as tightening environmental regulations [Read more…]

This is a guest post from one of our enthusiast readers, Colman Murphy. If you’re interested in reaching an audience of almost 200,000 monthly viewers with your automotive related article, get in touch with us! We’re looking for guest writers and additional staff.

The acquisition of Solar City by Tesla on November 21st leaves no doubt the latter is increasingly an energy company. Question is, does that make it less of a car company? I doubt Elon Musk feels compelled to focus on just one business — he’s had his hands simultaneously in Space-X, Tesla and Solar City for a decade now — but the combined debt and portfolios of Tesla and Solar City must be a source of many a discussion if not discontent among the company’s board and its investors. Earlier this year, this website already discussed a vision of long-term strategy of Tesla, which also brought up the idea that Elon Musk is looking beyond its current form as a car manufacturer.

There are no indications that Tesla must exit the car market, at least not in the near term. There are very few other brands — automotive or otherwise — that have executed their vision as effectively as Tesla, and that brand strength alone could carry the company for many years. But the Electric Vehicle/Plug-in Electric Vehicle (PEV) landscape is getting ever so crowded; Tesla’s next vehicle, the Model 3, will impose significant pressure on its profit margins; and a Republican-controlled US government is more likely to favor low oil prices and big trucks from the major corporations over green-technology vehicles made by niche manufacturers on the West Coast. With that as backdrop, a move away from cars might well be the right move for Tesla. [Read more…]

The future of mobility looks quite different from how we know it today, and most automakers are hedging their bets to make sure they’re part of that future, where they may no longer be called automakers but mobility providers. Autonomous driving, car-to-car communication sharing information like traffic conditions and a (at least partial) shift from ownership to a shared economy are among the most likely developments to become mainstream as soon as the next decade. And it’s not only the established automakers that are trying to establish their place in the future, it’s no secret that Apple and Google are aiming for a piece of the mobility pie as well. Although Google is testing with their own Google car, as well as with autonomous versions of existing models, their ultimate goal is not to produce their own cars and become a full-blown auto maker, competing with the likes of Ford, General Motors or Toyota, but rather to become a technology supplier and a mobility supplier, offering self-driving cars that would rival Uber in the ride-sharing business.

However, to test and eventually showcase its capabilities in autonomous driving, Google will have to forge a cooperation with an existing automaker and get its system built into one or more of that company’s cars. Such a tie-up would combine Google’s experience from millions of miles of autonomous driving by its fleet of a few dozen self-driving cars with the manufacturing and development capabilities of a large automaker. [Read more…]

Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne is famous for speaking his mind and making controversial statements about the automotive industry. He did so again earlier this week when he stated that he didn’t understand how the upcoming Tesla Model 3 could be sold for € 35.000 euros ($39,600) at a profit. He also claimed that he could build a rival to Tesla’s mass market sedan but doesn’t want to because he doesn’t see the business case: “If he (referring to Tesla CEO Elon Musk) can show me that it can be done, I will do it as well, copy him, add Italian style to it and put it on the market within 12 months”. Guess what? Sergio is right: it would be impossible for FCA to make money from EVs under his command, but that’s because he’s stuck in the traditional way of doing business as a car executive and an accountant.

Marchionne is betting big on gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs which are more profitable at the moment and probably will remain so in the near future. That’s a sound business decision from a purely financial point of view. But he lacks the vision to prepare FCA for the future beyond that, and he’s making the same mistakes as those American auto executives from the 1970s who didn’t believe they could make money from economy cars, until Honda and Toyota quickly rose to dominate the compact and midsized car segments and have continued to do so while making money off them. In the meantime, FCA is abandoning those segments because they’ve been trying to catch up with the Japanese, but simply haven’t been able to build competitive and profitable compact and midsized cars for decades. [Read more…]

After revealing the Tesla Model 3 last Thursday, Elon Musk tweeted the company had received 276.000 pre-orders by the end of Saturday. (UPDATE: THE FIRST-WEEK TOTAL NOW STANDS AT 325.000). That would translate to more than $10 billion in revenue if all of those orders end up being delivered. In less than 72 hours, it also almost fulfills the company’s full-year goal of 300.000 Model 3 sales, in a total of half a million annual Tesla sales by 2020. Filling the order base this quickly for a model for which not a lot of specs have been released so far and which won’t start deliveries for at least another year-and-a-half is an amazing performance from the start-up manufacturer by any measure. And if the rebound of its stock price continues, Tesla’s market capitalization will close in on that of General Motors again. However, FCA chairman Sergio Marchionne has been quoted last year that car makers need to sell at least 5,5 to 6 million cars per year in order to survive in the long run. And despite its quick rise out of nowhere as a challenger of the establishment, Tesla is still a long way from selling that kind of volume worldwide, and to reach it would require vast investment in additional models and in expansion of the distribution channel. So assuming Marchionne is right, what’s Elon Musk’s strategy for building Tesla into a long-term viable auto maker?

Let’s just drop the bomb right here: I don’t think he has such a strategy, because I believe he thinks of himself more as the boss of a tech company that happens to produce cars than as the boss of a car company in the traditional sense, like General Motors or Ford. For tech companies, making money in their first few years is much less relevant than achieving a certain network size and scale so their new technology can claim to have set the standard for others in that market to follow. Elon Musk’s vision for Tesla therefore is probably to set the technology standard upon which all future electric cars can be built, using his batteries and perhaps even his platform. That vision is reflected in the structure of the company, the design of the cars, the size of their battery factory, their decision to give away the patents to their technology and their Supercharger network and in their ability to do over-the-air software upgrades on their cars. [Read more…]

The premium large car segment has lost some ground in the third quarter, as year-to-date sales are down by 1.500 units after being ahead by 12.000 units after the first half of 2014. The third quarter loss is almost entirely due to the slowdown of the two leaders of the segment Mercedes-Benz E-Class and BMW 5-series.

The ranking has fluctuated this quarter with the 5-series down to third place in July before rebounding to the top spot in August, when the E-Class was down in third place. But an excellent month of September secured the top spot of the segment for the Benz year-to-date. With the Audi A6 outselling the 5-series for the quarter, the E-Class looks set to hold on to it until the end of the year. The model last finished on top of the ranking in 2009 and 2010 before the 5-series took over. It’s been even longer for the A6, as the Audi last topped the premium large car segment in 2007 and it doesn’t look like the current generation will repeat that excellent performance of its predecessor. [Read more…]

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport has recently introduced the Tesla Model S as the preferred airport taxi for arriving passengers who need transportation to their destination. This means a total of 167 Tesla Model S 85 kWh sedans are currently in use by two taxi companies, giving Schiphol the largest fleet of all-electric taxis of any airport in the world. A third company, Taxi Electric, has run a Model S between Amsterdam and Schiphol airport for a few months already, in addition to its fleet of Nissan Leaf zero-emission taxis. The Tesla taxis will serve Schiphol for a period of at least four years, with an optional extension of up to eight years.

“This represents a crucial step in our efforts to reduce CO2 emissions and become one of the world’s top three most sustainable airports’, explained Jos Nijhuis, Schiphol Group’s President and CEO, who happens to drive a Tesla Model S company car himself. The Tesla taxis are expected to run just over half of all taxi rides from the airport, as they’ll be supplemented with regular diesel-powered taxis during peak hours. [Read more…]

The Electric Car segment is the fastest growing segment in Europe in the first half of 2014, almost doubling in size compared to the same period of last year, and increasing its share of the European car market to 0,35%, roughly in in every 285 cars. The growth of the EV segment is actually speeding up, as 2013 sales were up “just” 74% on 2012.

The Nissan Leaf compact hatchback remains on top with over 7.000 units in six months time, an increase of 56% on last year, which was already more than double its 2012 sales, meaning the Leaf is on track for another record year. It is followed by the Tesla Model S, which has managed to top the Norwegian sales chart (of all vehicles, not just EV’s) again in March of this year. This was the third time ever the Model S has outsold all other cars in Norway, after September and December 2013. The Model S is on track to become the second electric car to break the 10.000 annual units level in Europe, after the Leaf.

As I predicted in my 2013 EV sales analysis, the BMW i3 manages to claim a spot on the European podium, selling 4.721 electric cars in the first half of the year, surpassing the Renault Zoe, which surprisingly sees its sales already slow down 15% in only its second year of sales. [Read more…]

Sales of premium large cars are up 6% in the first six months of 2014, and we have a neck-to-neck race for the victory in the segment: While sales of the leading BMW 5-series remain flat, the chasing Mercedes-Benz E-Class has gained 10% to bring it within 300 units of the 5-series. In fact, the E-Class has outsold its rival every month since March, with the exception of June, when the 5-series beat it by a single unit: 9.117 vs 9.116.

Mercedes-Benz has called the update of its E-Class last year its most expensive midcycle facelift of any model ever, and it seems to be paying off. If the E manages to take over the segment crown by the end of this year, it will be the first time to do so since 2010 and only the third time in the last ten years, while the 5-series had never beat its main rival before 2005.

The Audi A6 remains almost flat as well, firmly in third place but at a distance of already more than 10.000 units behind its two rivals, which the previous generation managed to beat three years in a row, from 2005 to 2007. The current generation has only managed a single second place, in 2012, by a margin of just 700 sales. [Read more…]

Sales of premium large cars in Europe have rebounded in the first three months of 2014, up 8% after a similar decline over the full year 2013. The top six ranking is stable, although the Mercedes-Benz E-Class is now challenging the BMW 5-series for the lead. Thanks to a 25% increase of sales, the E-Class has slashed its lifelong competitor’s lead from 7.654 units during the same period last year to less than 1.900 units. In fact, the Benz even managed to outsell the 5-series in March.

Meanwhile, the gap to the Audi A6 in third position has grown to almost 6.000 sales, as the A6 saw sales slightly decline. The 2005 to 2007 segment leader is falling further behind its main rivals as the latest generation A6 doesn’t vibe with European consumers as the previous version did.

The Volvo V70 in fourth place rebounds from a decline in 2013 to a 20% sales increase, thanks to a minor update in the third quarter of 2013, of which also the aging S80 is taking profit. The Jaguar XF has also been updated last year, but is already down 4% again this year.

The all-electric Tesla Model S is responsible for almost half of the segment’s growth, and is amazingly selling an average of 1.000 units per month. [Read more…]